Games Jam Collab- Week 1

06:58 BA2b , Collaboration 0 Comments

Having finished the collaboration with graphic design, which was a lot of fun and very rewarding, my next challenge is also a collaboration. Working with fellow Games Art Students to create a game on the theme of "One Button", preferably as a mechanic, but could this also be an aesthetic thing? Could the main character be made of patchwork, having a single button eye?

Not much was done this week as our group of three became a four due to various circumstances and other issues affecting our team members. However, we've all each been doing research into one button games in general and on the IOS store.

From playing and researching the games Ten Billion Wives and Get Bigger! Mola, the cookie-clicker addiction of having to use minimal effort to achieve a lot alongside physical clicking to hold engagement whilst acquiring more currency, prolongs entertainment by constantly surprising players through unlockables and a sense that the next reward is just around the corner. Within Mola Mola, a flappybird-like game, the player navigates an ocean avoiding big fish and eating little ones, getting bigger to eat these bigger fish and take on other creatures. The game constantly engages the player by giving them missions in this already addictive playloop, the addition of unlockable buddy items that give small rewards like extra speed and new characters with specialised abilities and control types keeps the player coming back for more, finding new ways to play.

The list that follows are a few ideas for this games jam, already one button could have many uses: holding, double tapping, pressing and not pressing could all be inputs!

-Karma Boomerang, with timing press the button to release a boomerange that richochets off moving obstacles, with an overarching narrative on Karma.

-8 Forbidden Virtues, an idea from a team mate where things like Manipulation or Trickery, represented by masks could be used to solve puzzles, holding the button and dragging being a mechanic to change the use of that button.

-Blind man's Bluff mechanic, holding the button keeps your character still

-Collecting and finding monsters by tapping objects and holding them down to add them to a bestiary

-As a theatre critic you have trap doors on stage, a well timed press will get rid of a poor actor

-Flute- exploring a 2D maze like cave, you must collect monster by putting them to sleep with your flute, activated by holding a button down. Your AOE expands and the time it takes to put an enemy to sleep dwindles as you upgrade, an example being a dragon who needs ten seconds of continuous AOE but your scope is quite small, having to be next to them for your flute to work, but being that close means death. Risk reward system

-Control the ghost, a zombie and the skeleton of a dead man, holding, double pressing and simply pressing changes control over which character, use all 3 to solve puzzles.

- A virus where the aim is to get bigger, button causes mitosis, get too big and white blood cells can find you easier

-Balloon fighter mechanics, keep pressing to flap and land on different islands where you can make money by selling maps through rhythm action games.

A mechanic that uses one button I was really fond of is the bubble gun in Cave Story, where holding down the button creates a shield of floating bubbles that slowly attack enemies and releasing the button unleashes a barrage, using something like this could be great.

As a united group, we sat and pitched ideas and eventually found we all had very similar interests and could agree what we wanted the core of our game to be.

-We all love monsters and creatures, they will be in our game
-An infinite runner(ish) with a following parade of sprites
-Upgrades, costumes and different characters
-IOS
- Levels like Rayman or Bit.Trip Runner that aren't infinite, but have a length and various challenges
-A meaningful game, with something to say

Many notes were made alongside loose scribbles designing our base concepts for narrative, features and much more. We're currently working on the game flow, an early prototype, concepts for the vision of our game and a 2D hubworld is richly desired.We played with the idea of what makes a monster and the ethics behind that as our driving force, but soon switched to the ruination of the world by man, and growing to realise the world is not a beautiful place. This reflects a mechanic idea where the player's character grows and is always running, trying to escape its fate or discover somewhere that is still a safe haven.

A loose idea of having a strange scratchy aesthetic between stages and loading screens of a small narrator questioning the player, much like in the game Memento Mori.




Having also played Depict1, Aether, Babies Dream of Dead Worlds and Coil, an art game is what we'd like to produce I feel. However a large influence has been Ori and the Blind Forest, so a game that's perhaps mechanically very simple but visually stunning is what I feel we're aiming for.

Despite a rocky start, I'm confident about this project and am eager to crack on. It's gonna be tough, but I'm looking forward to learning a lot and collaborating with my team.